With low-end, hi-def TVs in the $500 range, does it make any kind of sense to spend a quarter of that again on cables? Yes, I’m feeling a bit smug and superior today for having spent all of $14 some months ago on a generic HDMI cable at Fry’s (had to search for it — not in the video cable isle for obvious profit reasons) which, as the article mentions, works just as well as Monster Cables at more than 10x the price. Say it with me… digital ain’t analog… digital ain’t analog…
Monster Cables, Monster Ripoff: 80% Markups
Ever wonder why gadget store employees push Monster cables like they’re crack? Bitchin’ markups, just like you suspected all along. That’s what we found when a Radio Shack employee sent us his store’s entire inventory list, which included the wholesale and retail price of every item in stock.
Some cables, like the 19ft HDMI-DVI cable, have markups as high as 80%. Retail: $179.99. Wholesale, $99.40, a profit of $80.54. Or consider the 16 ft S-Video cable, which Radio Shack buys for $61.24 and sells for $114.99. We found non-name brand versions of both on Meritline.com for under $20. It’s not just limited to Radio Shack, Best Buy charges the same retail price, and, presumably, gets them for a similar wholesale price.
Here’s the thing: digital cables, by definition, have no signal loss. A cable is either digital or it’s not. As long as its built to HDMI standards, the only difference between a “fancy” digital cable and a no-name one is the price.
The article lists the markups on all the Monster Cables.
#20 Mister Uncle Ben
No, I haven’t heard of Tilly but I do vaguely recall when I was a kid Levis were lifetime guaranteed.
Cheers
# 27 j
Its the USB device that is 1.1 or 2.0 not the USB cable.
Cheers
I’ve worked at Best Buy and Frys, Best Buy has 6ft USB wires for $34!! while Frys has them starting at $3.89. Its nuts selling a product (at Best Buy) for less than $100 then to turn around and say oh yeah you have to buy this $34 wire too. I understand the whole profit margin game, but if you paid a decent price for products then wouldn’t it give you incentive to shop there again? By the way I cant even guess what Best Buy has HDMI wires for but Frys had a 10ft HDMI wire for $5 on sale with no rebates.
LAN cable not LAM…
This rant has some basis in fact. i.e. costly cables are a rip off. However, better cables have several criteria that are worth considering:
1) Quality of cable and connectors (do the connectors make good contact, do they keep their contact pressure when used over time, does the cable have consistent characteristics over its length and over time etc.).
2) It is important to consider whether they meet the bandwidth requirements (as said in an earlier comment) and whether they just meet it or whether they easily meet it.
Low quality cables are the cause of more problems than faulty electronics. I,too, have compared low end and high end cables. I will pay a reasonable prices for a cable that has good quality connectors, cable and easily meets the bandwidth requirements. However, like many people in this series of comments there is absolutely no doubt that a lot of the so called high end cables are perpetrating a fraud by indicating that they can make “the music sing” etc. Analogue cables are susceptible to phase and frequency problems and do improve with price, up to a point. Digital cables that are poor in quality can cause jitter issues with decoders and require a considerable amount of error correction in the receiving end of the process. This introduces decoding errors and hence sound and video problems. This is worse with low end electronics and cables on the edge of their specifications.
Let’s all agree that over paying is stupid, but do not assume that a $5 cable is equivalent to a $30 cable. They are not.
#31 THZ_HO
“The problem is not the HDMI standard but whether the cable you bought is certified to the HDMI standard”
I never said it was the HDMI standard. I agree it is whether or not “the cable you bought is certified to the HDMI standard” Although some claim to be but are not. I have run the gambit on HDMI cables. Like I said around the $50 range is where I find the best cables without the raping one takes with Monster. Anything I have ever bought under $50 just doesn’t hold up under 1.3 spec. Drop outs galore.
“If you buy cables made to a standard and are certified as being such from a reputable manufacturer there is no difference from the consumer fashion cables like monster. ”
I agree. Problem is many of the “cheaper” cables do not meet the specs and are not from reputable manufacturers(Well as far as that term goes lol :))
“Good certified cables do not mean expensive ”
I agree. I don’t see why you are saying this to me. I agree with you but I have never found a “cheap” cable that rivals the ones that are $50 or more that spec out at 1.3 and above. I can send uncompressed HD with Dolby TrueHD through my Monster cable and a few of my $50 cables but NONE of my $10 and $20 cables. So there is defiantly a difference.
“There are counterfeited cables everywhere and that is what you are seeing as poor performance”
Don’t know what you mean? The only cables I have problems with are the no name or lesser known name cables “cheap” . All of my brand name cables perform as they should. The reason most people don’t notice is A. they don’t have “professional” equipment and/or B. They can’t even tell the difference between SD and HD in the first place so noticing drop outs and digital distortion is far beyond them.
#34
“Its the USB device that is 1.1 or 2.0 not the USB cable”
Kind of but not really. A lot of USB 1.0 cables are not fully compliant where as most USB 2.0 are. This can affect the ability to function properly with a USB 2.0 device.
http://www.usb.org/developers/usb20/faq20/
#37 whitby
Right on brother. 🙂
There is no such thing as a digital cable. All the digits are represented by analog values, the transceivers at each end recognize the analog characteristics in reference to a clock signal and indicate “1” or “0” at a very high speed. So cables do matter. Cables frequently are also incredibly overpriced.
Gold plated connectors and well-made terminations do matter. Oxidation between contacts can distort the signal by rectification or increased or nonlinear resistance. Impedance “bumps” from bad connections can distort the signal and in high frequency (bandwidth) applications it matters – enough distortion and error correction starts being used and eventually fails to deliver 100% of the signal.(Those RCA phono plugs are a pretty good at matching the coax cables they’re attached to, which is why they’re still used).
The materials (dielectric and insulators) the cable is made from, and its physical construction, affect the signal.
The USB 2.0 spec goes to 480 MBPS, quite a bit higher than the 1.1 rate. So there IS such a thing as a USB 2.0 cable. Your 1.1 cable might work (does for me). You might not notice degradation from error correction or retries. For short cables (pick 6′ as an arbitrary number) you probably won’t notice the difference, even for high-spec HDMI.
Now don’t get me started on megabuck power cords and how they supposedly improve high frequency playback (or whatever) when they comprise 6′ of a maybe 50′ run of 12-2wG Romex!
That made me feel better about buying that generic hdmi cable some months ago!! After checking out the prices on monster cable, i didnt think it was worth the price 🙂
Most items are like that now. Just look at printers. You can buy a printer for less that $50. But a cartrige will cost you $30?? Tell where the profit is there! I wished I remember where I read it. But someone tested the high end speaker cable compaired to the standard 18gauge wire. I remember except for very long lengths their were no differences that could be measured. I am sure you can get some really cheap cables that may have some signal leakage or may not even work. Like the free cables you used to get with audio equipment. Heck, you don’t even get cables anymore.
I used to do RF work. Having good cables and connectors are important. That being said, using a cheap cable probably will work and work well. The problems arise when you move the cables, disconnect and then reconnect the cables frequently. The cheap stuff may come apart on you under those circumstances.
Most of us can’t even tell when we have the correct color balance, color temperature, etc on the TV sets. We don’t run high end studio monitors. As far as using a USB1 cable in a USB2 system, USB pretty much self determines the maximum clock rate and as such a crappy cable might drop back to a USB1 data transfer rate and transfer the data reliably at that rate. Pay for what you need, not what the store wants you to buy.
Also the number one reason why everything isn’t wireless already.
I worked at Musician’s Friend for a long time and we loved Monster Cables! Why? Because they had wonderfully fat margins. In a world of MAP pricing and slim margins it was nice to have something that could recoup our aquisition costs and actually turn a profit on some of those orders. Plus we could put them on sale and still have a higher markup than we did on other products. They were thanked repeatedly for giving us such fat margins.
They’re good cables, don’t get me wrong. But they’re way over-priced!
Ridiculously biased article attacking monster cable…ALL accessories have insane markups. To bash monster cable is moronic and petty.
OK,
10 foot
Make it Copper, silver, gold, gold PLATED.
20 awg or BETTER gauge wire.
>16 foot(you SHOULD NEED TO RUN THIS FAR)
18 gauge or better, is best, but you WONT FIND HDMI this size…COPPER is best medium, unless you can afford SILVER or gold Plated..
A GOOD copper cable should be able to run 24foot EASY…And in DIGITAL should be able to run around 50 foot, before you see ANY problems, with GOOD Gold plate connections.. And there is NO WAY it should cost you more then $20.
Last time I checked, copper wire is copper wire. Those guys are just asshats.
The real problem is that Monster and the other “high-end” cable vendors are half-right. A good-quality (~$20) RCA cable performs audibly better than a cheap one (~$1) in the analog realm. The problem is that the salesperson then leads the consumer into the “conclusion” that the more a cable costs, the better a job it can do.
#48 smartalix
Where is the FTC with all this?
I remember in the 70s the FTC regulated that all sound systems had to list comparable specifications in advertising for example:
50 watts RMS at 20~20khz at 0.1%THC into 8ohm load.
What the hell happened? Today this is not done.
This needs to be done with cables as well.
Have we become dumb and dumber?
Cheers
Monster Cable survives on FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt). Unless you have a $20,000 oscilloscope to test out your cables, do you really know???
So they plant the seed of doubt in your mind and tell you “buy these at some ungodly price, you can’t go wrong”. Of course, monster cable is quality product and I have no doubt it exceeds specs, but at a price that astonishes.
When you buy coffee, do you buy the $10 cup of coffee because you are uncertain as to the quality of the coffee in the $1 cup?
There is an acceptance level based on the balance between cost and performance, and its what should be the consumers benchmark. Yes, the 59 cent cable made in Bangladesh or Communist China probably is substandard, but I can guarantee you it will give you 90-95% of the performance you seek. Why should you pay $100 more to get that remaining 5% when you can only pay $5 more?
I have learned to live in the best of both worlds, I go to Big Lots! and buy the name brand Philips cables for $6 each. They normally retail for $20. I get armored cable, gold connectors, oxygen free copper, extra shielding, all that crap and so on at a discount.
The sad irony is the monster cable I do have (given to me by a friend) has all rotted out over time. The copper has all oxidized inside the wire, so I guess even Monster Cable isn’t perfect all the time.
Rick,
there are a few ways, BESIDES a $20K Oscilloscope..
1. is just a STRAIGHT voltage test, with increasing volts until you FRY that wire.
wont take long with 24avg wire.
2. is to Jam a full rage of frequency threw the wire and compare what you got at the other end..
Just use a Shortwave radio and BROAD cast threw the cable to a receiver, then AMP it..
3. also check for BLEED OVER onto other wires.